Pauper Commander - Abomination of Llanowar

Alejandro Fuentes • April 6, 2025

Deckbuilding Pauper Commander
Abomination of Llanowar
 by Vincent Proce

Kindred Decks in Pauper

Kindred decks are a bit of a weird subject in Pauper. In the 60-card competitive version of Pauper, they've been very relevant! Elves and Goblins are two of the most iconic decks of the format, coming out on top many times over the years. But in our version of Pauper, pEDH, however, they're kind of difficult to build, and the reason why is pretty simple.

In EDH kindred decks, there's an abundance of cards that care about a certain creature type. They could be lords, like Diregraf Captain

, or they could be one-size-fits-all cards, like Herald's Horn
. The problem with Pauper is there aren't really any cards like Herald's Horn
 that can support any type. When building a Pauper kindred deck, you're entirely reliant on the creature type you're building around having a sufficient amount of synergy with itself. 

Elves

And there's only one creature type that has that level of synergy: Elves, of course. Even in EDH, Elves are probably the most powerful kindred deck, and that translates to them being one of the only viable creature types to build around in Pauper. So what does an Elf deck look like in pEDH?

First, let's find a commander to lead them. I think we're gonna want both black and green in our color identity, so that gives us the options of either Harald, King of Skemfar

, Gnarlroot Trapper
, or the Abomination of Llanowar
, and I think the answer's quite obvious. Harald just has a mediocre ETB ability and looks like a wannabe Oko, while Gnarlroot Trapper
 wants to focus more on Viridian Longbow
 shenanigans than Elves.

So we're left with Abomination of Llanowar

, but we're not disappointed. Abomination of Llanowar
 is quite the worthy commander, encouraging a go wide strategy that Elves love, while backing it up with equivalent power and toughness. Fantastic!

Lords

Now, back to that mention of lords. While most other creature types lack synergy with each other in Pauper, Elves have plenty to go around. Priest of Titania

is one of the best lords ever, and shines here, adding a mana for each Elf we've got. (That's gonna be quite a few.) There's Timberwatch Elf
, which can make one thing, probably your commander, colossal. If Timberwatch Elf
 ever adds less than five power in an activation, I'll be amazed.

You've also got Lys Alana Huntmaster

, who summons Elves out of thin air, and then there's Birchlore Rangers
, who turn a table of patient 1/1s into a bunch of mana. 

Some of these cards don't benefit your other Elves, but benefit you when you've got a lot of Elves laying around. Wellwisher

, for instance, could keep you alive for a long time if you maintain the size of your army, and Wirewood Elf
 can get you the best Elf in your deck straight to your hand. There's a lot of utility to be found with these fellows. 

But while that's more or less the extent of cards that say "Elf" on them, I think there are more that could qualify as lords. You'll notice that there are a lot of Elves that tap to create mana, like Llanowar Elves

, so wouldn't it be convenient if you could untap all of them? Well, that's what Copperhorn Scout
 does, and I think that's enough synergy to call it a lord. Similarly, Ivy Lane Denizen
 greatly benefits from you Elves being played, by distributing +1/+1 counters with glee.  

The Value of Ramp

But I don't really think it's the abundance of lords that make Elves so effective in Pauper, or even in general. I just think it's the fact that they're all extremely focused on doing one thing and one thing only: making mana. Llanowar Elves

, Elvish Mystic
, Boreal Druid
, Fyndhorn Elves
, Arbor Elf
, and probably a million others, only exist to add a green to you mana pool. When you play Elves, you ramp constantly, and since ramping is one of the best things you can do in a game of Magic, period, you're bound to make a good deck. 

There are so many Elves we're playing that just ramp us. Rift Sower

taps for mana. Leaf Gilder
 taps for mana. Sylvan Ranger
 grabs a land that taps for mana. Llanowar Scout
 taps to put that land onto the battlefield, so that it can make mana. Wood Elves
 puts a land from your library onto the battlefield, which, you guessed it, taps for mana.

Man, I wonder if there's a creature type that does nothing but draw cards. Cephalids maybe? Hmm, actually they kinda do just draw cards. Not as well as Elves ramp, though. Anyways, you get my point. By focusing on Elves, we naturally get a lot of mana, which can be used to cast more Elves, and then we start snowballing. 

We don't even need an outlet for all that mana, either. We can just use it to keep investing in our board, and growing our commander. But speaking of our commander, how are we going to take advantage of all that power? Let's start with evasion. Trample is the first thing we should go for. There are a few Elves that we can use for this like, Elvish Herder

, but we're gonna have to branch out a little bit more.

Rancor

is a great way of ensuring our commander has trample for the entire game, but we can still make use of less permanent things like Gaea's Gift
. Any thing at all works, really, because if our commander's huge, we only need to hit once. This makes something like Ram Through
 absolutely perfect, because it gives us the opportunity to strike without even having to go to combat. One punch and our opponents our done, so anything we can do to make that hit happen is fantastic. 

1 Abomination of Llanowar
1 Arbor Elf
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Boreal Druid
1 Command Tower
1 Commune with the Gods
1 Copperhorn Scout
1 Deadly Dispute
1 Devoted Druid
1 Elven Farsight
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Elvish Eulogist
1 Elvish Herder
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Elvish Vanguard
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Essence Warden
1 Evolution Witness
1 Eyeblight Massacre
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Feed the Swarm
14 Forest
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Gaea's Gift
1 Gilt-Leaf Ambush
1 Go for the Throat
1 Grapple with the Past
1 Grisly Salvage
1 Haunted Cloak
1 Heart Warden
1 Ivy Lane Denizen
1 Jaspera Sentinel
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Lignify
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Llanowar Scout
1 Llanowar Visionary
1 Lys Alana Huntmaster
1 Masked Vandal
1 Mulch
1 Nature's Claim
1 Night's Whisper
1 Not Dead After All
1 Oubliette
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Presence of Gond
1 Priest of Titania
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Ram Through
1 Rancor
1 Rift Sower
1 Roots of Wisdom
1 Seeker of Skybreak
1 Sign in Blood
1 Skyshroud Ranger
1 Snuff Out
1 Springbloom Druid
1 Springleaf Drum
15 Swamp
1 Sylvan Ranger
1 Tamiyo's Safekeeping
1 Taunting Elf
1 Timberwatch Elf
1 Undying Malice
1 Unearth
1 Vorrac Battlehorns
1 Weatherseed Elf
1 Wellwisher
1 Winding Way
1 Wirewood Herald
1 Wood Elves
1 You Meet in a Tavern

And there you have it, the whole deck. There's some supplemental card draw, but at its most basic the deck is just Elves, a big commander, and evasion. It really doesn't need much more.

So what do you think of kindred decks in Pauper? What is it about Elves that makes them so effective? Is it just Priest of Titania

, or is it the fact that they ramp so much? Maybe it's the combination of all the synergy they have with their own abilities? Or maybe it's just the fact that Wizards of the Coast has chosen to make hundreds of good Elves over three decades. Hmm, yeah, it's probably that. Some creature types just get lucky. 

Alejandro Fuentes

Alejandro Fuentes

Alejandro Fuentes's a nerd from Austin Texas who likes building the most unreasonable decks possible, then optimizing them till they're actually good. In his free time, he's either trying to fit complex time signatures into death metal epics, or writing fantasy novels.